


his guard and his goaler

by reafterthought



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Gen, Guilt, Post-Kidnapping, drabblechap, ffn challenge: diversity writing challenge, ffn challenge: mini-fic masterclass, maybe in a different world they wouldn't have had such a messy friendship, or messier lol, when they try to be friends and enemies at the same time, word count: 1501-2500 words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-07-01 10:17:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15772101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reafterthought/pseuds/reafterthought
Summary: Kogami Ryoken knew it wasn't going to go well when he attempted to befriend Fujiki Yuusaku for the second time. Things got worse when Playmaker showed up.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, e9 - a drabble novel (like how you would write a regular multichap) with "chapters" under 500 words, and for the Mini-Fic Masterclass, #5 - The AT Tracks.

When Kogami Ryoken met Fujiki Yuusaku for the first time, he didn't learn his full name, or where he lived, or what his favourite colour was. He only knew the boy held a deck and could duel, and that meant he'd be able to help them with their research.

But Fujiki left without a word and it was days before he saw him again.

When Kogami Ryoken met Fujiki Yuusaku for the second time, he learnt what it meant to be uncertain, to be lost, to be scared. Because his father was a kind man and trying to save humanity… and yet they were screaming, this boy was screaming…

He shouldn't have looked. He shouldn't have looked but he did and now he knew, and he knew that face as well and now it wouldn't leave him. And he couldn't leave things like that either, could he?

Though if he'd known he'd be trading a tentative friend for his father, he would have left it forever. But that was easy to say in retrospect.

It was also easy to dig himself into a hole the third time he met Fujiki Yuusaku, but he also couldn't repeat his mistake twice in a row, could he?


	2. Chapter 2

Guilt was a double-edged sword. It saw him save a boy he’d thought he could befriend and instead led to his father entombed and turning stone-cold… and his compatriots and work and every mark he’d ever left vanishing into non-existence.

Guilt had left Ryoken alone and burdened with the knowledge that he himself had brought it all about. From the scant remains of his home and the money they hadn’t thought to touch, he cast a fishing line and caught his father’s soul on the brink of the abyss, but he was too young and ignorant and inexperienced to pull him back from there, yet. He needed expert help: his father first and foremost, and the men and women who’d worked with him. And he didn’t have that sort of help. He didn’t know where they’d vanished. If they’d met the same fate of his father, or thrown him to the dogs and run. And he didn’t have time to find out. His resources were better spent trying to find a way himself.

And yet, that wasn’t the only guilt he bore. He’d saved six children at the cost of all this after all. He saved a boy he’d been trying to befriend, a boy who could have been his friend, but he’d paid too steep a price and he hadn’t thought things through before he’d signed on that dotted line.

It was too late now. He had to save his father.

As for that boy whose love for duel monsters had gotten him trapped in this web… Ryoken didn’t quite know what to do. It was his fault for getting the other involved, and then his fault again for being emotionally invested and then ruining everything his father had worked for. But he wasn’t going to forget that boy in a hurry. Not the part of him who wanted to be friends. Nor the part of him who cursed the time they’d met.

He went to visit, if only to settle those parts of him and lay something to rest.

It didn’t work out that way.


	3. Chapter 3

Fujiki said the sign on the hospital room door. Fujiki Yuusaku said the receptionist. Fujiki Yuusaku said the boy with blue bangs and hollow green eyes.

‘Kogami Ryoken,’ Ryoken replied, and those words didn’t spark a reaction at all. So he didn’t know his father had been behind it all?

His face did spark a reaction though, when he took off his coat. ‘You’re the boy from that day.’ A moment silence, and then… ‘Were you there too? Did they get you too?’

Should he tell the truth, or lie? Did it matter?

He settled for a half-truth in the end, because there was nothing in that room, in that face, that said one way or another. If he’d known, if he’d hated him…

‘I wanted to be friends, but I turned around and you were gone and I didn’t get the chance.’

And there he dug his own grave, because he couldn’t let go of Fujiki Yuusaku after he sacrificed his father for him… but he couldn’t let go of his father as well.

So when, later, Yuusaku clutched his blanket tight enough to tear, sweating and hyperventilating and dry eyes boring holes into his feet, Ryoken offered only superficial comfort. And when the boy burst out, with a shuddering voice and more emotion he’d heard since those screams that left scars on both their souls, that he’d search for answers and revenge, all he could do was agree.

Even though he was one of the people he’d seek revenge on. And he was harbouring the main mastermind and the man who had all the answers.


	4. Chapter 4

__He was lucky Yuusaku never asked to visit, considering where their first meeting had left off. He was lucky Yuusaku was the sort who kept others out of his own problems and goals. He was lucky Yuusaku didn’t ask for help or even ask where his parents were (and he returned the favour by not asking why Yuusaku suddenly moved out of home as soon as he was old enough to legally live alone).

No-one seemed to care that Ryoken had been effectively alone for several years by that point, but since he wasn’t technically alone, it didn’t matter. He could handle things, anyway. There were plenty of takeaway places in Den City. All manner of learning material was available online, including the basics of hacking. And it didn’t take long before he could put himself down for home-schooling and get away with it despite lacking technical parental consent. It didn’t take long before he could start piercing things together, before he started getting the hang of hacking, before he started finding traces of his father and his father’s coworkers on the web.

It took a few years before he assembled them again, and in the meantime watched Yuusaku battle his own demons in his own way. He didn’t tell much, or ask much, or else the entire charade would come down on them. So he was simply a semi-frequent presence. They’d eat burgers together, or hot dogs. They’d talk about duelling because that was the only common ground Yuusaku knew he shared. It wasn’t much of a friendship in the end. They talked occasionally. Ate out occasionally. Went about their own lives otherwise and kept secrets from each other. And yet it was nice to be able to get out of the house, away from hacking and conspiracies (and right into the lap of someone he _couldn’t_ talk to about such things, and was thus forced to fish for other topics). And maybe for Yuusaku too… Maybe that was why he moved out of home, because his parents, the counsellors, everyone who knew him treated him like glass…

And then there was Ryoken, who ignored the elephant in the room because what else could he do?


	5. Chapter 5

Five years later, things changed. Ryoken hadn’t gone to a physical school in years, of course, but Yuusaku still did. He’d also taken up work at a friend’s hotdog stand, which was a surprise because Yuusaku hadn’t mentioned any other friends before. Even Ryoken did, sometimes, though he was careful not to reveal too much about them: about Faust or Baira or Genome… or even Spectre who was the complete opposite of Yuusaku in so many ways, despite being a victim of the same trap.

Victim… it was such a funny word. Spectre thought it was a blessing. Yuusaku described it (in not so many words) as a curse. It only really came up when they talked about future plans. Because neither of them really had future plans. Time had stopped, that day he called the police… Or, for Yuusaku, the day he’d been locked up in that container and forced to duel. Of course, he couldn’t say that in front of Yuusaku, but he could listen, and think, and if Yuusaku told him these things and then moved on to the next topic, then maybe all he wanted was to be heard and continue on.

Specte and Fujiki Yuusaku: two children involved in the Lost Incident and both friends of Ryoken. It was a dangerous place to be in. He’d know that when he’d taken that step to solidify that relationship and hidden things upon things so that, when he first met Spectre, he chose instead to expose himself and see where that lead. It lead to an ally, but it wouldn’t have led to an ally with Fujiki Yuusaku. He’d declared from the onset that he sought revenge, and even if he never said it to Ryoken’s face since that hadn’t changed.

He should just cut Yuusaku off. He knew that. He knew that years ago and now he had even more reason: they were about to awaken his father in Link VRAINS, and finally learn the truth.

But another part of him wanted to wait, wanted to keep this fragile friendship with Yuusaku.


	6. Chapter 6

The truth was hard to swallow. Ryoken had been both right and wrong, it appeared. It was the same with his father. He’d tried to create Eden’s fruit and had created poison instead, and it had sacrificed six children to do so. For Spectre, at least, it was a blessing in disguise but for the other five, their lives had been torn apart for something that, instead of saving humanity, may become the instrument to their demise.

And SOL Technologies decided power was worth more than humanity, worth more than their survival.

So when his father asked for help, Ryoken swore to help him: because his father hadn’t gone about things the right way, perhaps, but he’d tried to save humanity and he was, despite how they’d poisoned him for it, was trying to save humanity again. ‘I’ll help you, father,’ he said, and that meant the others: Faust, Baira, Genome and Spectre, would help as well.

Yuusaku… No doubt, if they moved into the open, Yuusaku would one day cross paths with him. But would he agree? Or fight against them?

Surely, if he knew…

But would his desire for revenge crowd out the danger to humanity? He didn’t know? Five years of friendship and he didn’t know. He couldn’t risk it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.


	7. Chapter 7

‘Do you duel in Link VRAINS?’ Yuusaku asked a couple of years later, out of the blue. By then they had started moving in that data world, calling themselves the Knights of Hanoi and searching for those AI that could orchestrate the destruction of humanity.

‘No,’ Ryoken lied. He carried an old-fashioned duel disk anyway, so the lie was believable. ‘Why do you ask? Do you?’

‘No,’ Yuusaku replied. ‘But some people from school do.’

And that was all they talked about, but Ryoken wondered. The data from their underlings, simple duellists who duelled and searched for the Cyverse and collected information for them, suggested a certain duo causing problems on several occasions. Unnamed and Unowned: two entirely unoriginal avatar names and yet they were skilled hackers and duellists and had apparently broken through the rumoured tomb. They’d said it was empty but apparently it wasn’t; apparently the eyes of Hanoi had been too blind, because the next time one of that duo appeared, it was armed with the Cyverse deck from the puzzle of that tomb. And now Unknown went by the name Playmaker, emissary for revenge and searching for answers regarding the Lost Incident…

They didn’t talk about it further, because that would mean prying open the lid of eight years ago, the lid on the secrets he was keeping from one of his only friends… and that, potentially, Yuusaku was keeping from him as well.

But if they were Playmaker and Revolver, they’d eventually meet on the battlefield.


	8. Chapter 8

‘You’re avoiding Playmaker,’ his father noted. ‘Is that wise?’

‘I can't help it,’ Ryoken admitted. ‘I can't share many things with him, but he is my friend regardless.’

‘Will you fight him?’ his father asked. ‘When the time comes? For that AI he’s gotten a hold of?’

‘Yes.’ Because that AI could destroy humanity, and was the real reason his father had been forced into near death by SOL technologies. ‘I dragged him into this… but I can’t let him ruin this.’  _Not again_ , was the unsaid part of that thought.

His father frowned. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I was narrow-sighted in my attempt to save this world. I too those children to be sacrificial sheep and I allowed myself to become a sacrificial sheep as well. But we cannot allow those AI to rampage around this world. They must be stopped.’

And so they tried. Genome fell. Baira fell. Faust fell. Spectre fell.

And at the foot of the Hanoi Tower, Playmaker and Revolver met.


	9. Chapter 9

Ryoken realised he was right after all, and when Yuusaku greets him by his name – by “Ryoken” instead of “Revolver”, he knew the other had realised it as well.

‘Three reasons,’ Yuusaku said, and there might have been a flicker of a smile on his face but it was gone too quick to know. ‘Your manner of speaking hasn’t changed.’

It hadn’t, and he hadn’t even realised he’d given himself away like that, when Yuusaku hadn’t recognised him in the hospital.

‘Your surname is “Kogami”.’

‘You broke into SOL Technologies?’ Ryoken asked rhetorically. He must have had a skilled hacker at his side to manage it. Not even Baira could, but maybe that was because Baira had once worked for SOL Technologies, like his father, and they’d been prepared for her. She’d escaped detection, but she also hadn’t made it inside.

‘The starlight road, that you can see from your mansion… You mentioned it in your duel against Go Onizuka.’

He laughed shortly. ‘So I gave myself away. But so did you, Fujiki Yuusaku. You declared your intentions right in front of me. You started working in a hamburger stand out of the blue, with the older brother of another Lost Incident victim who’d graduated from one of the best universities for computer science in Japan. You asked me about Link VRAINS after the Knights of Hanoi started showing up, but before they’d become publicly known.’

Of course, all of those were moot points when they’d called each other by their real names.

‘It doesn’t matter, though.’ Revolver lowered his helmet shield. ‘Hand over that Ignis before it destroyed the world.’

‘I cannot,’ Playmaker’s gaze didn’t falter in the slightest, even without a mask to protect it. ‘Hanoi will destroy the world.’

‘Ignis will destroy the world,’ Revolve hissed.

They couldn’t settle this with words, not ten years after the battle had started.

‘Friend or not, I must defeat you here.’

‘Me too.’


End file.
